Odds are you’re too young to remember this time, because Berkeley ’68 to ‘73 is a book filled with pictures and stories from fifty plus years ago. It’s The Sixties told without the haze of the media pontificated all over it, and if you give it a chance you might come away with a better idea of what the times were like.
Mark Woods has made a very personal book about both the times and his times. Drawing from thousands of pictures he made on the streets of Berkeley while a student studying Cultural Anthropology, Mark has fashioned a memoir of small details; friends and daily life set against the big changes happening all around them. It brings the feeling of those days back to life in a real and wonderful way.
Here’s a sample of how he remembers things taken from his intro. He’s writing to illuminate a picture of a big old ramshackle house on 63rd St.… “Jim from Chicago had a place in Oakland with room for two more. My fellow Hearst House roomie, Tom, joined me to move to 63rd St. Jim quickly moved on to I know not where. Soon after, my friend Tom had a heart attack in front of Zellerbach Hall. He’d gone to scalp concert tickets. His parents called after midnight. I looked for him. My friend was gone. Poof. Click.” Yeah, glimpses of things passing by.
One more example, a picture spread across two pages that introduces Telegraph Avenue. It’s a jumble of cars and busses, people, and a hundred signs from a hundred places long gone. What a moment of confusion! What a sense of vitality and energy. What a time of possibility.
This is not a history of political ferment, although it has plenty of that. What’s wonderful is that those pictures stand right next to pictures of people making things for others to wear and people making music, and there are pictures of the people he lived with in those days, young and beautiful, and finding their ways. It’s what he saw then and how he chooses to show us now. A young mans vision selected by an older mans understanding of what’s important. It’s a fine book worth holding in your hands.
Written by Andy Romanoff
Berkeley ’68 to ’73 – A Photo Memoir – https://markwoods.com/
Andy Romanoff’s website – https://www.andyromanoff.com/
